While the first-year manager of the Detroit Tigers allowed his pitching coach, Jeff Jones, plenty of leeway in handling the struggles of star pitcher Justin Verlander, given their long-standing relationship, now he’s taken a more personal hand.

The three spoke at length Tuesday afternoon, after Verlander’s seventh straight sub-par outing raised his era to 4.98.

“JV, he’s open to discussions, anything to make him better. Early on, Jonesy knows him. I kind of let them work on it. But recently, Jonesy and I have talked more about it. I’ve gotten a little bit more involved. Jonesy has the history with him, he knows Ver better than I do and he knows his mechanics better than I do. But that being said, I talked to Jonesy about it the last few days so we’ve kind of all gotten together on it,” Ausmus said. “We looked at video. All three of us looked at video together. As a catcher, I’ve seen pitchers go through those types of things, mechanically, I understand what’s being talked about, what can go wrong.

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“So, yeah, I am actively joining those two in trying to solve the problem.”

What they saw, when comparing Verlander’s video from this season was noticeable.

“We definitely saw something,” said Ausmus, who was satisfied with the discussion. “He’s not down on himself, which is the important thing, and we all feel this is extremely correctable. We’re working toward that.”

While Ausmus was meeting with the media in his office, Verlander was out in the bullpen working to implement another correction.

“Well, he’ll start doing it immediately. The problem is, your body gets so used to doing one thing it’s hard to train it to do something else. In fact, sometimes you know exactly what you’re doing wrong, and you still can’t tell your body to do it the right way,” Ausmus said.

“I don’t know how long it will take him to make these adjustments. It could be, he might be able to make them really quickly. It might take a little bit of time. It’s hard to tell.”

The issues have been particularly glaring later in the games, roughly the third time through the order for Verlander, or when he passes 75 pitches.

Enough that Ausmus might end up pulling him earlier in games.

“I even thought about it, going into (Monday’s) game that if he got through six, and he wasn’t up to Justin Verlander standards, in terms of pitch count, just get him out so he’s got a good outing under his belt. It’s something I considered even going into yesterday. I guess that would be something I’d think about,” Ausmus admitted.

“It’s more difficult because of what he’s done at the Major League level, and the pride he takes in pitching deep into games. But if he’s pissed at me for a couple outings, because I took him out early, but they were good outings, and we can get him on a little bit of a roll, I’m all for him being pissed at me for a couple outings.”

That’s hardly the only symptom of the problem that’s been on display during the bad stretch.

— Big innings have killed Verlander lately.

“I think it’s just a bad pitch at the wrong time. That’s what it boils down to,” Ausmus said. “You have two guys on base, make a bad pitch, and it gets hit over the left-field wall for a three-run homer.”

— Largely speaking, it’s more a mechanical thing than a physical thing. He’s not hurt, and the stuff’s still there, Ausmus said.

“It’s the location. It’s not the velocity. He’s got plenty of velocity,” the manager said. “The velocity he’s throwing at is more than enough to get people out, strike people out on a consistent basis.”

— His strikeouts rate (6.4 per 9 innings) is the second-lowest of his career and strikeout-to-walk ratio (1.68) is the worst for any full season.

“I think it’s a combination. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that he’s not locating the ball the way he normally does,” Ausmus said. “My feeling is that it’ll creep back up.”

— The thought that Verlander’s struggles are a product of the aging process, considering he’s 31, and has logged a tremendous number of innings (1869 2/3) and pitches.

“I think that’s premature. I really do. I don’t think he needs to reinvent himself. I don’t think he needs to start throwing a knuckleball. We’re talking about a guy that still throws 96 (mph). He hit 98 a few times in Chicago. He hit 96 regularly. We’re not talking about someone who’s gone from throwing 100 to 91,” Ausmus said.

“This guy still has it in him. I don’t think we’re at the point — I don’t think he’s at the point — where we need to reassess his approach to getting hitters out that drastically.”